


Long Way Home

by Ingridarcher



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Drinking, M/M, in another life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-18
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2019-02-03 19:30:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12754704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ingridarcher/pseuds/Ingridarcher
Summary: Hanzo Shimada is sick of his husband's wanderlust, and braves a curious establishment to bring him back home.Tom Waits AU. McCree has always struck me as someone who would have a love-affair with Americana the way Waits does, and poor Hanzo would fight all the weird stuff the whole way.





	Long Way Home

**Author's Note:**

> So, this was my piece for the now-infamous zine Bullseye.  
> I'm not sure what to say about it. It was my first zine and likely my last, now. All I'll say is none of us knew that was going on. Every contributor was gobsmacked by this. I myself wasn't very present in the process, I mostly filled out the forms they asked for and sent my piece in, then kindof forgot about it until all this started happening. I guess in retrospect we feel a little naive for not demanding more transparency with the financials, but we trusted everything was being run appropriately. Live and learn, I guess.

The joint was up on stilts in the middle of a stinking bog—three lopsided stories of driftwood walls, brass organ pipes, and torchlight. It was crowned with a crooked neon sign, gaudy against the nighttime. “Saloon,” it read, the “a” and “l” burned out. A percussive tango thundered from inside. It was weird, ominous, and out of the way. _Exactly_ the kind of place Hanzo Shimada would expect to find Jesse McCree.

Torbjörn, the one-armed dwarf who’d ferried him here, was tying the airboat off at the saloon’s dock. “Ye don’t seem this dive’s usual, aheh, _adventurous_ sort of patron.”

“I have little use for adventure,” Hanzo said,  smoothing back his long, raven-black hair into a fresh warrior’s tail. Sweat crawled over his bared arm, or maybe that was the insects.

“Then, if you don’t mind me asking, why are ye here?”

Hanzo stepped from the airboat onto the saloon’s sodden dock. It felt like it would give under his weight any moment. “I am looking for my husband.”

“He missing?”

“By his own volition, no doubt. He has a tendency to rove after an assignment.”

Their respective covert missions had ended four days ago. Hanzo had rushed back home, only to (as always) be left staring at the door, waiting for McCree to return.

Ducking into his fluffy, pale-blonde beard, Torbjörn said, “Normally, a strongly-worded phone call sends someone runnin’ home.”

Far-off, a train-whistle blew.

“Yes, well, much like the establishments he favors,” Hanzo nodded at the saloon, “Jesse McCree is anything but _normal_.”

Hanzo paid the airboat fare, which was—because _everything_ in America had to be baffling—a black thread from Hanzo’s kyudo-gi, a swig from his sake gourd, and a secret.

“Oh-ho, that’s a good one,” Torbjörn said, leaning back from Hanzo’s whispering lips. “Need me to stay?”

“Yes,” Hanzo said. “What is the return fare?”

“Fer one person, or two?”

Hanzo approached the saloon’s screen door, the eerie live music getting louder. When he spied a familiar brick-red serape in the back near the bar, Hanzo fingered his iron wedding ring and narrowed his eyes like a coin slot.

“That remains to be seen.”

The saloon smelled of moss and gun smoke. A dozen patchwork couples occupied the dance floor, red leather skirts and panama hats; clutching hands and crooked limbs. Hanzo looked past them to the bar. The bartender, an old woman with a patch over one eye and a tattoo under the other, rimmed three shot-glasses in what looked like rust, filled them with Chivas Regal, then dropped a crocodile's tooth in each. Much to Hanzo’s disgust, three rowdy patrons at the bar slammed the shots, tooth and all, then licked the rust from the rim.

Unsurprisingly, McCree was among the trio, in his red serape and Stetson hat. He thumbed scotch from the dark whiskers on his chin, chuckling. Hanzo’s hands yearned for his bow, so he might put an arrow in the laughing bastard.  He shoved past the dancers, stopping at McCree’s back. If Hanzo’s husband had looked sheepish, nervous, even angry, Hanzo might have felt better. Instead, when McCree turned, his brown eyes lit up and he opened his arms with a smile.

“Darlin’, what’re you doing here? You’re a sight for sore eyes, even with that sourpuss expression.”

“Me?” Hanzo said incredulously. “What are _you_ doing here?”

“Helluva place, ain’t it? A diamond that wants to stay coal.” McCree gestured with his revolver at the chandelier made of broken, bottle-green glass. “I was just tellin’ these folks I wanted a dance partner, and here y’are.”

“I did not come to dance.”

“But honeybee, I love this song.”

Hanzo looked to the band in the corner. It was like none Hanzo had ever seen—a bluesy Gibson, an upright bass, a rusted saxophone, and congas. The “song” they were playing, if it could be called that, was a mamba about a bird whose house was on fire.  This strange place meant to drive him insane. Still, Hanzo didn’t want to argue in public. Dancing would offer the opportunity for (relative) privacy.

“Fine.”

McCree slipped a tanned arm around Hanzo’s waist, pulling him out to the dance floor.

“You were supposed to be home four days ago,” Hanzo said.

“Has it been that long?” McCree took Hanzo’s hand, tugging their bodies together. “Hell, the days get all jumbled when I travel.”

“They would not, if you _flew_ home like a normal person.”

Hanzo stumbled to find the song’s eccentric rhythm. McCree, on the other hand, swayed easily.

“Who’d wanna marry a normal person?”

“I wish _I_ had.” Hanzo stared at his own feet. “How can you dance to this?”

“You could too, if you stopped to listen.”

Hanzo glared.

McCree winced. “I just mean, we travel the world, but you’re only seein’ the inside of hotel rooms and plane terminals. What’re you rushing home so fast for?”

“I come home to see _you_ ,” Hanzo shouted, pushing away. “But you are never _there_.”

He realized his volume had called attention to them. Motley patrons stared with bloodshot eyes. Heated, Hanzo absconded outside. Torbjörn was waiting, and Hanzo considered leaving right then. Instead, he circled the veranda to the saloon’s postern. He leaned over the balustrade, hoping the quiet would clear his head. No such luck. McCree’s spurs jangled after him. Hanzo spun, wearing a well-aimed glare.

McCree put up his hands. “You want me t’give ya some time alone, I will.”

After some consideration, Hanzo shook his head, leaning again on the railing.

McCree sidled over to him. “I didn’t mean to start it in there with you. I know you don’t like fightin’ with folk around.”

“I do not like fighting at all.”

“Gotta, sometimes. Especially when I’m being an asshole.”

Hanzo suppressed a smile and bumped McCree with his elbow.

“I know I leave home plenty. But this, here,” he tapped Hanzo’s chest, over his heart, “I take it with me when I go. You _know_ I love ya, right?”

“...Yes,” Hanzo said. “But there are times I think you love the road more.”

A loaded silence. Then McCree said, “I do love it. I can’t rush home like you do, knowing everything I’m rushin’ past.”

Hanzo touched McCree’s tanned fingers. “It is only that you are familiar to me, while this country is so strange.”

“You thought _I_ was strange when we met, right?” McCree turned to face him. “I’m gonna love you ‘til the wheels come off, but you can’t be the only thing there is to me. I can’t be the only thing to you, neither.”

“What else should I be?”

“I can’t answer that for ya, honeybee. But maybe start by lookin’ around instead of straight ahead.”  McCree nodded out at the swamp.

Hanzo looked.

Shards of moonlight stabbed through gaps in the Spanish moss. Muffled by the walls, the music harmonized with bullfrogs and katydids. The roots of the mangrove trees reached like fingers into the duckweed. A railway signal started flashing in time with a swarm of careening fireflies. Hanzo spied tracks under the water, between the lily pads.

“This is a train station,” Hanzo said.

“You didn’t notice?”

“No.” Hanzo smiled up McCree’s rugged face. “I was looking straight ahead, I suppose.”

Like a banshee, a train roared out from around a grove of trees, its whistle screaming. It kicked up a wake of water as it chugged to a stop behind the saloon.  

“This line runs to Union Station,” McCree said. “Reyes always talked about LA like he’d grown up in a Raymond Chandler novel. Pepper trees, Cahuenga Boulevard, the foothills. Sure would love to see it someday.” He stared, lovesick, at the rusty boxcars, then looked at Hanzo just the same way. “Let’s go home.”

Hanzo stroked McCree’s shaggy hair, then went to see Torbjörn at the dock.

“I’m sorry about this,” Hanzo said, “but we do not need a ride back after all.”

He pressed the fare for two—a lonely cufflink, a rusted jackknife, and a burned-out fuse—into Torbjörn’s hands.

McCree peered over Hanzo’s shoulder. “What’re you up to?”

Hanzo nodded at the train. “Let’s go.”

“ _You_ wanna ride that old swamp-train halfway across the country?” McCree chortled. “Sugar, that’s sweet, but you ain’t gotta do this for me.”

Hanzo looked back at the buzzing, glowing swamp. He hadn’t noticed how strange, yet lovely, it was until McCree had pointed it out.

“Perhaps, I must do it for me.”

That earned him a sunshine grin from McCree. They jumped the balustrade then waded out to the tracks, where they clambered into a graffiti-covered boxcar and sat beside one another. McCree took Hanzo’s hand and kissed the iron ring, hammered from a revolver bullet, just like McCree’s ring, which was made from one of Hanzo’s arrowheads.

“You know what you ‘n the road got in common,” McCree asked, as the train pulled away.

“What?”

“Y’never fail to surprise me.”

With his cheek resting on McCree’s shoulder, Hanzo watched the saloon’s neon sign fade into the distance.


End file.
